To what extent do cultural factors explain different attainment levels between social groups?

1. To what extent do cultural factors explain different attainment levels between social groups? Do the working classes have a culture that leads to educational failure?

2. What are the issues? • Is there a culture or cycle of disadvantage affecting working class children? • Is the culture of working class people different or deficient in some way from the culture of the middle classes?

3. J W B Douglas (1964) • Douglas says that middle class parents show a greater interest in the education of their children. • There is an emphasis on high attainment in middle class homes. • Middle class parents keep in touch with the educational progress of their children. • Working class parents do not feel at ease in a middle class situation such as a school.

4. Basil Bernstein (1970s) • There are two language patterns in daily use - limited codes and extended codes. • Limited code is everyday spoken language. Short simple sentences are used and often details and explanations are omitted. • Extended code explains things in greater detail and uses long, complex sentences. • Both languages are familiar to the middle class but only the limited code is used by the working class. • Teachers in school use the extended code and therefore working class children are at a disadvantage from the outset.

5. The New Right This view is very critical of working class culture, viewing them as agents of their own destruction.

6. Underclass theories (1990s) • Charles Murray believes that children brought up in single parent families lack a male role model. • Discipline in families has decreased. Young men are not correctly socialised. • A culture develops that has these characteristics: • Neglect and abuse of children • Broken relationships • Victimization by crime • Despair and fatalism

7. Dalrymple (2001) • The British underclass have developed a culture of: • Passive thinking • Denial of agency and personal responsibility • Rationalizations for self-induced helplessness, such as "addiction" • Perverse, primitive, valueless sexualization

8. However, from the Marxists Cultural deprivation is viewed in a different way; the working class are victims of the system

9. C Wright-Mills (1950s) Elite self-recruitment. • Members of the highest sectors of society prevent educational failure and protect their interests and those of their children by sending their children to the best public schools. • This allows them the chance to acquire the social skills and background to rise to the best and most powerful positions.

10. Pierre Bourdieu (1977) • The middle and upper classes have cultural capital as well as financial capital. • They have an advantage over the working class because their parents give them support in terms of books and reading, literature, art, classical music, visits to museums, theatres and art galleries. • This culture is closer to the culture of the school, and therefore they are more likely to be successful.

11. Alice Sullivan (2001) • Tried to measure the cultural capital in four comprehensives schools in England. • She gave a questionnaire to Year 11 pupils to try and discover which books and newspapers they read and which television programmes they watched. • Her research confirmed that there was a strong connection between the cultural capital of parents and that of their children. • This supports Bourdieu's supposition that cultural capital is taught by parents in the home.

12. Evaluations • There is little evidence to support the underclass thesis. • Most social scientists tend to see the problems of the working class as being related to the structures of society. • It makes the working class take the blame for their own failure in education. • There is little that is practical that governments or schools can do to solve the problem of working class underattainment

13. Role Play • Create a role play in which there is a teacher, and two students, one with cultural capital and elaborated code of speech and another with cultural deprivation and a limited code of speech. • Your scenario should demonstrate how the lack of cultural capital disadvantages the child in their education. • The rest is up to you !